Your experience as a Postpartum/Mother Baby RN

ayorenee · Oct 21, 2011

I worked as a postpartum RN for a level III in an underserved area of Chicago. And honestly I liked it. My typical shift I would have an average of 4-5 couplets (mom and baby) so essentially that is 8-10patients. I would start doing rounds and giving pain meds. Pain control is important. You are somewhat of a lactation consultant to the new moms as the unit Lac. consultant is only there during day time hours. Breastfeeding education is important. New moms are eager and very receptive to learning, so there will be a lot of education involved. But also be prepared to do blood transfusions, give mom or baby antibiotics, transfer a baby to the NICU, call the social worker, and possibly DCFS is baby test positive for any drugs etc. It can be difficult at times because you do have two different doctors to report to (Peds and OB). But overall I liked Maternal/Child nursing and I think you should go for it!!!

Calabria, BSN, RN · Oct 21, 2011

My floor is a busy antepartum/postpartum unit. I love my job... I never know what to expect when I get to work, and I love the population that I'm working with! My day starts getting report on my patients... I'll usually have 3-5 mothers (one to two antepartums at most, the rest postpartum mothers). The postpartum patients may or may not have babies (some have suffered from fetal demise, some may have an infant in NICU). So, the most patients I'll have is 10, counting babies, but it's usually 7-8.

I check my orders with the reporting nurse, and go see my patients for assessment (postpartum: pain assessments, fundal checks, lochia, incision checks for C-sections, perineal checks, bowel sounds, passing gas/BM, blurred vision, edema, breath sounds, etc.). I do vitals and an assessment on the infants, as well (bowel sounds, fontanel checks, checking the cord stump, documenting feedings and diaper changes, overall appearance). One thing that we do a lot is education, especially with breastfeeding, normal changes for mom in the postpartum period, and normal infant behaviors.

We try to get our patients discharged by noon (since babies don't stop coming, and we're almost guaranteed at least one admission per shift), so once I check in on all of our patients, I make sure that everybody who needs a discharge order has it and I start getting all of that information together.

The rest of the day with my postpartums consists of following up on patient pain, making sure that the infant is being fed q2-3h (and voiding/stooling appropriately), and really just letting mom know that I'm there for her when she needs it. We also do labs on the baby when he/she is 24 hours old.

I'm having a hard time describing a typical day... It's not always this "routine" (or simple-sounding), of course. People think that postpartum nursing is just passing pain medication and water, but I'll be the first to tell you that in my short experience (approaching a year), I've seen three mothers nearly code (one of them did this twice), and two infants in my care rapidly deteriorated. The most common problems that I've seen with postpartum patients have been hemorrhage and infection... The thing with postpartum moms and infants is that they generally stay stable if they are already healthy, but when they deteriorate, it happens very fast.

I guess that leads to cons... you've probably seen some bad things working in Oncology... OB is generally a happy place, but when bad things happen, they're really bad.

SHELBYISH · Oct 22, 2011

I have to do a care plan on nursey? can anyone help?